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Author: Kazuo Odachi
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462921493
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
**Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner** An incredible, untold story of survival and acceptance that sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history. This book tells the story of Kazuo Odachi who--in 1943, when he was just 16 years-old--joined the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a pilot. A year later, he was unknowingly assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps--a group of airmen whose mission was to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into enemy ships. Their callsign was "ten dead, zero alive." By picking up Memoirs of a Kamikaze, readers will experience the hardships of fighter pilot training--dipping and diving and watching as other trainees crash into nearby mountainsides. They'll witness the psychological trauma of coming to terms with death before each mission, and breathe a sigh of relief with Odachi when his last mission is cut short by Japan's eventual surrender. They'll feel the anger at a government and society that swept so much of the sacrifice under the rug in its desperation to rebuild. Odachi's innate "samurai spirit" carried him through childhood, WWII and his eventual life as a kendo instructor, police officer and detective. His attention to detail, unwavering self-discipline and impenetrably strong mind were often the difference between life and death. Odachi, who is now well into his nineties, kept his Kamikaze past a secret for most of his life. Seven decades later, he agreed to sit for nearly seventy hours of interviews with the authors of this book--who know Odachi personally. He felt it was his responsibility to finally reveal the truth about the Kamikaze pilots: that they were unsuspecting teenagers and young men asked to do the bidding of superior officers who were never held to account. This book offers a new perspective on these infamous suicide pilots. It is not a chronicle of war, nor is it a collection of research papers compiled by scholars. It is a transcript of Odachi's words.
Author: Kazuo Odachi
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462921493
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Get Book Here
Book Description
**Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) Winner** An incredible, untold story of survival and acceptance that sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in Japanese history. This book tells the story of Kazuo Odachi who--in 1943, when he was just 16 years-old--joined the Imperial Japanese Navy to become a pilot. A year later, he was unknowingly assigned to the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps--a group of airmen whose mission was to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes into enemy ships. Their callsign was "ten dead, zero alive." By picking up Memoirs of a Kamikaze, readers will experience the hardships of fighter pilot training--dipping and diving and watching as other trainees crash into nearby mountainsides. They'll witness the psychological trauma of coming to terms with death before each mission, and breathe a sigh of relief with Odachi when his last mission is cut short by Japan's eventual surrender. They'll feel the anger at a government and society that swept so much of the sacrifice under the rug in its desperation to rebuild. Odachi's innate "samurai spirit" carried him through childhood, WWII and his eventual life as a kendo instructor, police officer and detective. His attention to detail, unwavering self-discipline and impenetrably strong mind were often the difference between life and death. Odachi, who is now well into his nineties, kept his Kamikaze past a secret for most of his life. Seven decades later, he agreed to sit for nearly seventy hours of interviews with the authors of this book--who know Odachi personally. He felt it was his responsibility to finally reveal the truth about the Kamikaze pilots: that they were unsuspecting teenagers and young men asked to do the bidding of superior officers who were never held to account. This book offers a new perspective on these infamous suicide pilots. It is not a chronicle of war, nor is it a collection of research papers compiled by scholars. It is a transcript of Odachi's words.
Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226620921
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
“We tried to live with 120 percent intensity, rather than waiting for death. We read and read, trying to understand why we had to die in our early twenties. We felt the clock ticking away towards our death, every sound of the clock shortening our lives.” So wrote Irokawa Daikichi, one of the many kamikaze pilots, or tokkotai, who faced almost certain death in the futile military operations conducted by Japan at the end of World War II. This moving history presents diaries and correspondence left by members of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during the war. Outside of Japan, these kamikaze pilots were considered unbridled fanatics and chauvinists who willingly sacrificed their lives for the emperor. But the writings explored here by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney clearly and eloquently speak otherwise. A significant number of the kamikaze were university students who were drafted and forced to volunteer for this desperate military operation. Such young men were the intellectual elite of modern Japan: steeped in the classics and major works of philosophy, they took Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” as their motto. And in their diaries and correspondence, as Ohnuki-Tierney shows, these student soldiers wrote long and often heartbreaking soliloquies in which they poured out their anguish and fear, expressed profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulated thoughtful opposition to their nation’s imperialism. A salutary correction to the many caricatures of the kamikaze, this poignant work will be essential to anyone interested in the history of Japan and World War II.
Author: M. G. Sheftall
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593472322
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 497
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Book Description
A revelatory and groundbreaking account of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze—the suicide pilots of World War II—as told through the eyes of the survivors In the final year of World War II, a horrific new weapon was unleashed in the Pacific: the kamikaze. Idealistic, young Japanese men had been taught that there was no greater glory than to sacrifice one’s life to defend the homeland. Now, with the war all but lost, thousands of these determined warriors were hastily trained in the basics of piloting an airplane, then sent out in waves to crash into enemy warships, suicide attacks that killed altogether some seven thousand American sailors. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle and lived? In the wake of 9/11, ethnographer M. G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cloistered community of Japan’s last remaining kamikaze survivors. As an American fluent in Japanese, Sheftall was the only westerner to ever sit face-to-face with these men and hear their stories. The result is a fascinating journey into the lives, indoctrination, and mindsets of the kamikaze, through the eyes of participants who are now lost to time.
Author: Hatsuho Naitō
Publisher: Kodansha
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Thunder Gods is the compelling first-hand account of the pilots who pledged themselves to die for their emperor in the closing days of the Pacific War. Known to the world as kamikaze-divine wind-their suicide attacks on American naval forces caused panic and disruption, but they were bourn out of the desperation of the Imperial Command, determined to avoid the shame of surrender at any cost. Using as a rationale the loudly proclaimed belief that suicide attacks by Japanese pilots attested to the spiritural righteousness of Japan's struggle, the Command's exhortations convinced legions of young men of the virtue of bombs were contructed whose only guiding mechanism was their human cargo. The pilots are the thunder gods of the title, and this is the first time they have told their own story.
Author: Dirk Benedict
Publisher: Square One Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 0757052770
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
The best-selling memoir Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy tells the fascinating story of actor Dirk Benedict’s journey from the big sky country of Montana to the hustle and hype of Hollywood. It also describes his odyssey of self-discovery and growth as he changes from struggling actor to celebrity, from meat eater to vegetarian, from cancer victim to cancer victor. Brilliantly written—insightful, witty, and always challenging—Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy may change the way you perceive actors, and even make you reconsider the truths in your own life.
Author: Peter C Smiyh
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781593132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
In this brand new publication from eminent historian Peter C. Smith, we are regaled with the engaging and often incredibly disturbing history of the Kamikaze tradition in Japanese culture. Tracing its history right back to the original Divine Wind (major natural typhoons) that saved Japan from invaders in ancient history, Smith explores the subsequent resurrection of the cult of the warrior in the late nineteenth century. He then follows this tradition through into the Second World War, describing the many Kamikaze suicide attacks carried out by the Emperor's pilots against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign.??These pilots were at the mercy of an overriding cultural tradition that demanded death over defeat, capture or perceived shame. Despite often being under-trained and ill-prepared psychologically for the sacrifices they were about to make, they were nonetheless expected to make them. The dedication of sacrifice for the Emperor and the Nation is explored by dissecting the traces left behind by these pilots. Smith provides a detailed look at the heartbreak of the pilot's families and the men themselves, the notes they left and the effects on those who did not share their philosophy. The views of individuals under attack are also included in this balanced history.??Countless attacks carried out over the Philippine Islands (including the sinking of the St Lo) are analyzed and the Okinawa campaign is afforded particularly strong coverage, with the sinking of HMAS Australia explored in detail. The collective sacrifice is then summed up, with reflections from survivors on both sides appraising events in a humane historical context. A detailed appendices then follows, featuring units formed, sorties mounted, ships sunk and damages inflicted.
Author: Albert Axell
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
The use of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots during the second world war was one of the most dramatic and chilling developments of the war. But who were the Kamikaze pilots and what motivated them to make the ultimate sacrifice? The call for Kamikaze pilots drew a staggering response. Three times as many applied for suicide flights as the number of planes available. The authors of Kamikaze: Japan¿s Suicide Gods look into the hearts and minds of the Kamikaze pilots, viewed in the full context of the war and the Japanese cultures and traditions out of which the Kamikaze emerged. Based on interviews with Kamikaze survivors, unpublished memoirs, and documents not previously open to the public, the book portrays one of the most extraordinary and astonishing events in history, an event that has made Kamikaze a household word around the world.
Author: Hiroo Onoda
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612515649
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
In the spring of 1974, Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese army made world headlines when he emerged from the Philippine jungle after a thirty-year ordeal. Hunted in turn by American troops, the Philippine police, hostile islanders, and successive Japanese search parties, Onoda had skillfully outmaneuvered all his pursuers, convinced that World War II was still being fought and that one day his fellow soldiers would return victorious. This account of those years is an epic tale of the will to survive that offers a rare glimpse of man's invincible spirit, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. A hero to his people, Onoda wrote down his experiences soon after his return to civilization. This book was translated into English the following year and has enjoyed an approving audience ever since.
Author: Linda Sue Park
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702251267
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
A heartwarming tale of courage, resilience and hope from master storyteller and winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal, Linda Sue Park. When her name was Keoko, Japan owned Korea, and Japanese soldiers ordered people around, telling them what they could do or say, even what sort of flowers they could grow. When her name was Keoko, World War II came to Korea, and her friends and relatives had to work and fight for Japan. When her name was Keoko, she never forgot her name was actually Kim Sun-hee. And no matter what she was called, she was Korean. Not Japanese. Inspired by true-life events, this amazing story reveals what happens when your culture, country and identity are threatened.
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781500607012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes diary entries and other accounts written by kamikaze pilots *Includes a bibliography for further reading One of the most fascinating aspects of World War II was Japan's use of suicide pilots known around the globe as kamikazes, though the Japanese referred to them as Tokubetsu kogekitai (“Special Attack Units”). Translated as “God Wind,” “Divine Wind” and “God Spirit,” kamikazes would sink 47 Allied vessels and damage over 300 by the end of the war, but the rise in the use of kamikaze attacks was evidence of the loss of Japan's air superiority and its waning industrial might. This method of fighting would become more common by the time Iwo Jima was fought over in early 1945, and it was especially prevalent during the invasion of Okinawa in April 1945. The “privilege” of being selected as a kamikaze pilot played directly into the deep-seated Japanese mindset of “death before defeat.” The pilot training manual assured each kamikaze candidate that when they eliminated all thoughts of life and death, fear of losing the earthly life can be easily overcome. Still, not all cases of those chosen to be kamikazes were equally noble. Recruits were trained with torturous regimens or corporal punishment, and stories of mental impairment caused by drugs or saki abound. Some were described as “tottering” and dazed, being carried to their planes by maintenance officers, and forcibly pushed in if they backed down. Pilots who could not find their targets were told to turn around and spare their own lives for another day, but if a pilot returned nine times, he was to be shot. At the moment of collision, he was instructed to keep his eyes open at all times, and to shout “Hissatsu” (“clear kill”). Altogether, nearly 4,000 kamikaze pilots died in combat between October 1944 and August 1945, and about one in seven managed to hit his target. At their peak, they did far more damage to the American Navy than did conventional air attacks, and they undoubtedly placed a significant new obstacle in the path of the American forces slowly encircling the Japanese home islands. However, the widespread use of kamikaze tactics darkened and hardened attitudes toward Japan within the American military and helped to set the stage for the total war on Japanese civilians that the American military waged in the closing months of the war. The Marine Corps Gazette noted, “The ruthless atrocities by the Japanese throughout the war had already brought on an altered behavior (deemed so by traditional standards) by many Americans resulting in the desecration of Japanese remains, but the Japanese tactic of using the Okinawan people as human shields brought about a new aspect of terror and torment to the psychological capacity of the Americans.” As one sailor aboard the USS Miami recalled about kamikaze attacks at Okinawa, "They came in swarms from all directions. The barrels of our ship's guns got so hot we had to use firehoses to cool them down." The kamikazes were the most effective weapon the Japanese had in terms of sinking ships, but they only appeared in the final year of the war. The fact that Japan's military leadership concluded it was both necessary and justified to establish special units of pilots trained to sacrifice their own lives by crashing their planes into enemy vessels was a mark of their own desperation. In the heat of battle, individual soldiers occasionally risked certain or near-certain death to protect their comrades or advance their mission, but organized unites devoted to suicide tactics were virtually unknown before 1944. They appeared only once the course of the war had turned decidedly against the Japanese. The Kamikazes chronicles the history of Japan's famous suicide pilots and explains when, why, and how Japan resorted to their use near the end of war. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the kamikazes like never before.
